Wide Marker Customization [TUTORIAL]

[This tutorial originally ran on the CopicMarker.com website. Read the Original Post here. Enjoy!]

Wide markers are great for a number
of things: filling large areas with rich, consistent color, calligraphy and
lettering, applying background foundation tone for shading and sketching, and
for making plaid patterns. For those with an adventurous spirit there is a
final frontier to the exploration of wide markers, and that is the customization
of your own nib.

Through
the selective removal of areas of the wide nib through physically cutting into
the nib itself, you can add raking lines to your encyclopedia of mark making,
and a really nice way of making rainbows as well!

Things you’ll need:

Copic Tweezers:
These handy tweezers have teeth that are handy for gripping the nib for
mess-free removal and replacement.

Spare Nibs: The
stock Wide marker nib is the angled Extra
Broad chisel nib, but the flat Calligraphy
nib is great for lettering and controlled raking lines.

Xacto Knife: A
Sharp cutting tool is essential. There’s no match for a sharp blade when making
clean cuts! Using a dull blade will result in frayed cuts that are undesirable
for this technique.

The Technique:

Safety First! R29 is a great color
for blood, there’s no reason to make your own! For this tutorial, I will show
you how to cut a number of notches into the flat Calligraphy nib resulting in
raking lines that are great for making crosshatch lines, and exciting zigzag
lines.

When cutting notches into the nib,
you want to cut at an angle into the nib, resulting in a notch that has a
V-shape. This will give you a clean, un-frayed notch.

Once you have your first notch cut,
evenly space the notches along the nib, but leave enough space between notches
so that the nib still has some structural integrity.

The next step is swapping
out the existing nib from your favorite wide marker and inserting the new
custom nib.

Notice that with the tweezers, I am
pulling the nib straight out of the marker. When removing the nib, be careful
not to damage the nib, as you can save the original nib in an airtight ziplock
bag, and swap it out later!

Now What?

Now we have a customized Wide
marker. At this step, the new nib is dry, without any ink and it will take some
time for the ink from the marker to fully ink the nib, but if you are looking
for faster results, you can use ink to “refill” the nib for instant coloring!
Be sure not to add too much ink, but just enough to soak the nib itself. Once
you see the nib fully colored, it’s ready to go. Ink from the marker itself
will fully saturate the nib over time.

Now the Fun Part:

As
you can see from the pictures above, I have inserted my customized the nib into
a colorless blender marker. Now I’m going to use a number of colors to make a
rainbow with the notches that I have created.

Touching the chisel end of a sketch
marker for a few seconds (any other marker will do, but I find that the chisel
end works best) to the end of my customized colorless blender wide marker, I
have created an instant rainbow marker.

Voila! Depending on how much ink you add to the blender marker, the
longer you will be able to color with your new Rainbow Copic.

IMPORTANT: Make sure to use up all of the added color to the
colorless blender marker before capping the marker for the day. Any color left
in the nib will seep into the marker itself and tint your colorless blender
over time. Coloring on some scratch paper or smooth Bristol board is a great
way to clean your colorless blender of added colors.

Other Techniques:

Use this technique to create
interesting raking lines, or for separating a marker into two broad strokes,
which is great for calligraphy and borders.

Using the colorless blender with a
number of notches cut into the nib, you can create some very interesting
textures to colored swatches!

I
encourage you to experiment with different ways of customizing the nibs, and
using your marker not only for lines, but also for stamping and patterning! Try
overlapping your lines for quick gridwork, or for drawing flowing hair; but
most of all, have fun!